Posted on 05/08/2013 5:46:50 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
China’s top newspaper on Wednesday published a call for a review of Japan’s sovereignty over the island of Okinawa—home to major U.S. bases—with the Asian powers already embroiled in a territorial row.
The lengthy article in the People’s Daily, China’s most-circulated newspaper and the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist party, argued that the country may have rights to the Ryukyu chain, which includes Okinawa.
The island is home to major U.S. air force and marine bases as well as 1.3 million people, who are considered more closely related to Japan in ethnic and linguistic terms than to China.
The authors of the article, two scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, considered China’s top state-run think-tank, said the Ryukyus were a “vassal state” of China before Japan annexed the islands in the late 1800s.
“Unresolved problems relating to the Ryukyu Islands have reached the time for reconsideration,” wrote Zhang Haipeng and Li Guoqiang, citing post-World War II declarations that required Japan to return Chinese territory.
The article also repeated Chinese government arguments for China’s historical claims over a set of tiny uninhabited islets in the East China Sea known as Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese.
The two nations have stepped up a war of words over the dispute in recent months, with Beijing’s vessels regularly entering the waters around the Tokyo-controlled islands, stoking fears of armed conflict.
Questions over Japan’s right to Okinawa were probably aimed at raising the stakes in the East China Sea dispute, said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“I think this is psychological warfare,” he said, adding: “The major point is to put pressure on Japan so that the Japanese administration will be forced to make concessions over the Senkaku islands.”
Okinawa is the biggest of the Ryukyu islands, which stretch for about 1,000 kilometers from Japan’s mainland, and were the center of the Ryukyuan kingdom that paid tribute to Chinese emperors until it was absorbed by Japan in 1879.
But some Chinese see historical ties as a basis for sovereignty and dismiss Japan’s possession of the islands as a legacy of its aggressive expansionism that ended in defeat at the end of World War II.
China’s government does not make such claims, but state media have from time to time carried articles and commentaries questioning Japan’s authority.
China is also in dispute with southeast Asian neighbors over huge swathes of the South China Sea, which it claims based on a map published in the 1940s.
Analysts have said that Beijing is growing increasingly assertive in pressing its territorial claims, while nations across Asia have invested massively in upgrading their naval capacity.
America:
Bring back American industry now.
Stop sending jobs to China.
China: flush with money, full of nationalistic pride.
And communist.
Somehow, we have forgotten that, as has much of the world. They all love “the bitch dollar” (figuratively speaking) but communists aren’t really supposed to say that.
Remove these burdens from the private sector and the industry will return.
Yep. We have to make America “business friendly”, but the marxists have a permanent foothold in this country, beginning in the White House.
The Poser In Chief mouths things about how important business is, but he and his acolytes don’t believe it.
To them, business is a means to an end.
The US and our allies defeated the entire world during WWII sooo, we own it... what we do with it is our business...
It’s one thing to claim a bunch of uninhabited reefs. It’s another to claim an island with 1.3 million people who don’t want to be a part of you. This isn’t going anywhere.
If they keep this up they'll unite not only all of asia against them but the entire eastern hemisphere.
Guam?
Everyone knows that’s going to be a tipping point.
Why not - the Chinese have already ‘reconsidered’ who owns Tibet, and they’re ‘reconsidering’ who owns Taiwan and India.
Japan, you’re next; not just Okinawa, but the four main islands, too - Kyushu, Shikoku, Honshu, and Hokkaido.
Then, no doubt, Hawaii and maybe California.
In the 1400’s China was the worlds great super power. China dominated the pacific but then for some strange reason turned inward. So their claim goes back to the brief time when they dominated the region. Seems like a pretty weak claim to me, but might makes right and China has a lot of might.
Pissing off the Japanese, Vietnamese. Taiwanese and Indians all at the same time, not to mention the USA might not be in Chinas' best interest. I'm also pretty sure Russia is keeping an eye on China too.
Here here!
VERY well said!
Thanks BwanaNdege, much appreciated.
Time for Japan to have nukes.
I think they can have California, at least everything south from Sacramento south. From Redding north it is like a different state anyway.
I don't think they will consider that complete until they have a decisive military victory to point to. The problem is that China might be creating a dangerous alliance against it, that it cannot handle. Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and India could cause some real problems for China.
Oil is China's weak spot. 90% of its oil imports must cross the Indian Ocean, and then transit the many straits and the South China Sea. China's Navy cannot hope to overcome the sea and air power than such an alliance could muster over those areas. And if defeated at sea, the Chinese would be forced to defend land routes to that oil, a thousand miles through the ‘stans and the Himalayas.
> Massive corporate taxation, limitless legal vulnerability, crushing environmental regulation and pro-Union arbitrary Government: these are why industry chooses to locate away from the USA.
>
> Remove these burdens from the private sector and the industry will return.
It’s not likely to happen so long as we have big-businesses endorsing a sort of Fascism from the government; that amounts to industry endorsing all those things:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3016829/posts
That sounds like a good strategy for the Anti-China Alliance.
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